Hi, everyone

This is my first time here. My family nickname is Scarlet, for my hair. I've been cooking professionally for about 23 and half years and I love food every bit as much now as when I first began as a teenager. I got most of my training in a classical French kitchen where I originally started out as the kitchen slave. For the next two weeks I'll be prepping and cooking for my Mom's 45 person Christmas Party, every year she starts asking me in October and to be honest, it's my favorite 'job'. I have four kids, 3 sons and a daughter. My two older sons are in demand year round, they both bounce around all over the country cooking in different restaurants. I'm beginning to teach my younger son and daughter now. I've worked as a kitchen slave, prep cook, saucier, line cook, meats and fish, garnish and garde manger (which is my least favorite, sorry, y'all). I know very little about pastry except what I learned from pastry chefs, so look out pastry chefs! I've cooked and lived in Chicago, New Orleans, Dallas, Austin, Manhattan and the Bronx in New York and in Miami and Boca Raton, Florida. New Orleans is my favorite (course I'm biased, grew up there and in Chicago. Chicago is my home base now. I am looking forward to getting to know everyone.

Sounds like you've led a fairly peripatetic lifestyle, but all that travel broadens horizons, too!

Welcome to Cheftalk. You will find members from all over the world and of all culinary abilities on here. I hope you will take time to read some of the wonderful articles on here and to view the photographs, too. Great inspiration to us all!

Please join in on threads of specific interest to you, or start your own!

thank you for your book recommendation. i'm thrilled to have a Chicago connection for my culinary needs. i'm sorta' like an overly excited puppy let loose in a china shop so be prepared to be peppered with a myriad questions like, "where do you go to buy fish in Chicago?"...and feel free to tell me to chill out...

Well, I am as inexperienced as it gets really. I was a server for years but the only cooking and baking I do is at home. I love to cook and bake and want to learn sugar and how to REALLY do cakes. I want to learn for the sake of learning really not for a biz. Hope to get some pointers on here:smiles: